I saw someone point out once that what is often depicted in fiction as "poisoning," a clutching at the throat and a sudden death, is curiously similar to what happens to someone going into anaphylactic shock after eating something they're allergic too. A lot of actual poisons tend to be less sudden and dramatic in their effects.

I'm not saying that environmental changes couldn't be having an effect on increased incidence of allergies, but it's also worth considering that the concept of allergies is barely a century old. It's entirely possible (and the article hints at this at times) that they were conceived of differently in the past, that our patterns of movement and consumption expose us to more potential allergens than people were exposed to historically, etc...

As long as IP as a paradigm persists, something is either owned or else it's available to be exploited. You can't escape it. The only way to curtail it is to attack the greater paradigms that shape labor in general. The products of people's labor will only be freed when they will no longer have to trade their labor to survive.

Obviously one can try to oppose the most egregious abuses (the Disneys, the Apples, etc...) though the only real way to do it is through political reformism. But trying to completely dismantle IP without dismantling capitalism is a mostly pointless exercise. If those in power couldn't monopolize ideas, they'd just work harder to monopolize means of production.

I'm gonna let you in on a dangerous little secret that I think most cis people (and even a lot of people who consider themselves trans or simply question their gender identity) don't realize, and that's that most of the popular narrative about transgender identity is total fucking hogwash, either made up by and for a cis-normative, gatekeeping medical establishment, or else cobbled together by trans people in an effort to try to explain some very complex, visceral feelings in terms that people who have never felt them might possibly be able to understand.

When was the last time you saw a trans person excited to transition because they felt like they were doing some universal good by correcting the "error" of "being born in the wrong body"? And while some of us may feel that way and it's a perfectly valid feeling, it's not the desire to balance out the universal gender scorecard that drives us to transition. I want tits because I want tits, and I don't give a shit if you think science says I shouldn't.

Transition is not about conforming to and reinforcing some natural model of binary gender; that's the same bullshit thinking that drives doctors to mutilate intersex babies, and the same sticking point that TERFs get utterly wrong. It's a process of personal desire and fulfillment, whatever that may entail.

Lots of older editions of D&D have been essentially cloned and released for free through the Open Game License (OGL), though I'm not sure that the OGL would actually pass the freedom purity tests for this sub (I don't mean that in a disparaging way).

In particular I'm fond of Labyrinth Lord (a slightly modified clone of the old 1980's Basic/Expert boxed set editions) and OSRIC (based on the old first edition of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons).

Likewise, the most recent 5th edition has its System Reference Document (mostly just pared down mechanics of the game, without a lot of the elucidating game text to contextualize them, but fine if you already know how to play) released, also under the OGL.

If you are just interested in tabletop roleplaying games in general that don't necessarily resemble D&D, rpggeek has a list of RPGs released under a Creative Commons license that's probably not exhaustive but is still significant. Lady Blackbird, Lasers and Feelings, Eclipse Phase, Donjon, and The Shadow of Yesterday are all worth checking out, in my opinion.

Honestly, most of the Japanese New Wave stuff was made by super-lefty directors, and there's a lot of stuff worth watching there if you can stomach the style. Even when they aren't overtly political, a lot of the films deal with themes that are really important in leftist thought; power, class, desire, etc...

Woman in the Dunes
Night and Fog in Japan
Diary of a Shinjuku Thief
Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets
Emperor Tomato Ketchup
Eros + Massacre
History of Postwar Japan as Told by a Bar Hostess
Funeral Parade of Roses

I don't like "anarchy" because it describes a state of existence, something that's utopian, something that's solved, something that's stagnant. It implies that there's an end point, that at some point there will be no more work to do. That things will ever be good enough, that it's somehow a self-sustaining kind of existence once it's achieved.

"Anarchism", on the other hand, is a process of betterment, it's actions, it's a working towards something, and I think that's a much better description of what it should mean to be an anarchist. If you ever think you're done, that's just you giving up, or compromising, or not looking hard enough.

Having some idealized end goal makes it possible to do shitty things with the expectation that the ends will eventually justify the means. But the means are actually the only thing that matters, the lessening of oppression in the moment, nothing but moments upon moments upon moments of anarching.

I'm all for people trying to deal with addictions that they feel are damaging their lives.

But the "nofap" movement is way too adjacent to a lot very dangerous ideas for me to be comfortable with it. Lots of ink has been spilled linking fascism and authoritarianism to sexual repression, and I'm absolutely convinced that people are using masturbation cessation as a front for fascist recruiting.

Even "Just Asking Questions" is a tried and true tactic for spreading propaganda under the guise of "genuine" inquiry, and one that's underpinned by certain ideas, such as the supremacy of "rational" thought and debate, or entitlement to a platform, with which some people disagree.

Speech can't exist in a vacuum, and content can't be divorced from form, and if people think the form is unconstructive or in bad faith or even harmful, they should have every right to disagree with it just as much as if they felt the content itself were harmful.

The "establishment machine" has been working to suppress leftist ideas for longer than I've been alive. Not that we shouldn't be paying attention, but if you're a leftist, assuming you're going to be censored should be a default, regardless of where, how, or to whom it's happening this week.